Just a gossip pipeline

     "Her kindness is not sympathy; her good nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it."

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Just land a good man

     "Aye, it is a fine thing to be young and handsome. Well! I was young once, but I never was very handsome - worse luck for me. However I got a very good husband, and I don't know what the greatest beauty can do more."

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Dedicated to idleness

     As there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be the most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being  busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have  een properly idle ever since."

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Just leave me alone!

     She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation.

(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Not impressed by the D. A.

     His arm was seized from behind. It turned out to be a hanger-on from the D. A.'s office. "Mr. Roche wants you to phone him at once!"

    "You can tell Tom Roche, for me, that he can jump in the East River."

    "But he wants to know what it's all about. Who are you arresting, and for what? Some of them say the prisoner is one twin, and the rest of them say he's the other, and the D. A. is going batty . . ."

    "He hasn't far to go, if you ask me," the Inspector remarked.

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

All hail, Intellectuals

     "Laurie has that respect for intellect, even for twisted intellect, that most healthy young morons have."

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

The downside to Wyoming

     "Go back west, and be happy? Say, you don't think I like it out there, do you?"

    "But I thought . . ."

    "You've never lived through a Wyoming winter," Rose Keeley told her savagely. "Snowdrifts up to your armpits, blizzards three days a week, and mail about twice a month. You've never lived a day's drive from the nearest town, where you can't buy anything or go anywhere or have any fun! I hate it, I tell you!"

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Sly lawyers' methods

     "I don't think that trail leads anywhere. Hubert was at the movie when the murder was committed, with the stupid but estimable Aunt Abbie. But I think I know - "

    Miss Withers stopped bustling about with her broom. "You mean?"

    "I mean the brotehr of Dana Waverly, that's who I mean. Charles Waverly, the distant relative and next male heir of the Stait family. He's a lawyer, and therefore in a position to know just what loot there would be in the Stait future."

    "Lawyers usually have better ways of getting loot than committing murder for it, " Miss Withers suggested dryly. "They play it safe, as a rule."

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Revenge against the Prof

     The Inspector searched the mantel and under the carpet, as a matter of form, but there was no key anywhere. "Do your stuff, kid," he ordered.

    The young operative became deadly serious as he went over the lock. His hands made a few deft motions, involving the use of a long coiled spring, a screwdriver, and the blade of a knife. Then he placed his shoulder against one side of the door frame his right foot against the other, and pressed inward

    There was a sharp click, and then the door opened. Swarthout looked at his wristwatch. "One minute and forty-five seconds," he announced. "I wish the professor who flunked me in Mechanical Engineering could have seen that."

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Passing the time

     Piper gave the driver the Minetta Lane address. "What were you doing behind this cab when I came down?'

    Swarthout looked innocent. "Nothing, Inspector. Nothing but passing the time away." There was the slightest accent on the word "passing."

    "Oh, yeah? You're a fine example to the public, Swarthout. The crap-shooting detective, huh? Gambling in public!"

    Swarthout took a pair of pink cubes from his pocket and rattled them lovingly. "I don't mind telling you in confidence, Inspector, that with these dice there isn't any gambling in it at all. I found 'em on Tony the Wop last week, and they take the chance out of games of chance."

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Patient waiting

     Miss Withers knew that there was a saying that if you wait on the corner of Forty-second Street at Fifth Avenue long enough, you will meet everyone you ever knew. She had always doubted the usefulness of meeting everyone she'd ever known, and besides, there wasn't a high of probability that one of the cowboys had taken up such a vigil. Much less Rose Keeley, who didn't appear a highly patient person.

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Morals in short supply

        "Did you think twins came into the world neck and neck, like racehorses on the home stretch? Laurie was born at midnight some twenty-four years ago, and Lew came at one o'clock. Like as two pins, they were, only Laurie was always yelling and Lew never did anything more than snivel. Twins have only morals enough for one, and Lew got 'em all."

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

One mean old woman

     "Trained nurse?" Hubert was almost laughing. "You don't know Gran. She'd throw a trained nurse out of the window, would Gran. She's a despot, and not so benevolent a one, either. I'd hate to cross her. And he hasn't let even the maid into her bedroom in years and years. If you got a trained nurse without her consent, or did anything else against her orders, Gran would be perfectly capable of cutting your throat. She's so old she doesn't care what happens."

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

Pollution back then?

He rubbed his eyes, half-blinded by the thick falling flakes of the sooty precipitate which passes for snow in Manhattan.

(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)

A warning to all young couples

 How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Be very careful

    "Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson; that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable - that one false step involves her in endless ruin - that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful - and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen) 

Can't say much about his wife

     Her father, captivated by youth and beauty and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding nd illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever, and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of the country and of books, and from these tastes had arisen his principal enjoyments. To his wife he was very little indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Realism or cynicism?

     "The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense." 

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Always marry for money

     Mr. Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attchment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage hd always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservation from want.

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Feigned humility

     "Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Those confounded milkmen!

     "If you want to know the time, ask a pleeceman," she said. "You been on this beat long?

    "Just short of two weeks, miss."

    "I been here three days."

    "I hope you like it, miss."

    "So-so. The milkman's a nice boy."

    Constable Plimmer did not reply. He was busy silently hating the milkman. He knew him - one of those good-looking blighters; one of those oiled and curled perishers; one of those blooming fascinators who go about the world making things hard for ugly, honest men with loving hearts. Oh, yes, he knew the milkman.

(from "The Romance of an Ugly Policeman," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Spineless in love

    For some days after the breaking-off of diplomatic relations, Wilton seemed too pulverized to resume the offensive. He mooned about the links by himself, playing a shocking game, and generally comported himself like a man who has looked for the escape of gas with a lighted candle. In affairs of love the strongest men generally behave with the most spineless lack of resolution. Wilton weighed thirteen stone, and his muscles were like steel cables; but he could not have shown less pluck in this crisis in his life if he had been a poached egg. It was pitiful to see.

(from "Wilton's Holiday," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A drink with kick

     I found myself in a large room with an enormous picture stretching across the whole of one all, and under the picture a counter, and behind the counter divers chappies in white, serving drinks. They have barmen, don't you know, in New York, but not barmaids. Rum idea!

    I put myself unreservedly into the hands of one of the white chappies. He was a friendly soul, and I told him the whole state of affairs. I asked him what he thought would meet the case.

    He said that in a situation of that sort he usually prescribed a "lightning whizzer," and invention of his own. He said this was what rabbits trained on when they were matched against grizzly bears, and there was only one instance on record of the bear having lasted three rounds.

(from "Extricating Young Gussie," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Financial chump

     Nobody was fonder of old Uncle Cuthbert than I was, but everybody knows that, where money was concerned, he was the most complete chump in the annals of the nation. He had an expensive thirst. He never backed a horse that didn't get housemaid's knee in the middle of the race. He had a system of beating the bank at Monte Carlo which used to make the administration hang out the bunting and ring the joy-bells when he was sighted in the offing. Take him for all in all, dear old Uncle Cuthbert was as willing a spender as ever called the family lawyer a bloodsucking vampire because he wouldn't let Uncle Cuthbert cut down the timber to raise another thousand.

(from "Extricating Young Gussie," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A plodding reader

     There was something admirable - and yet a little horrible - about Henry's method of study. He went after Learning with the cold and dispassionate relentlessness of a stoat pursuing a rabbit. The ordinary man who is paying installments on the Encyclopaedia Britannica is apt to get over-excited and skip impatiently to Volume XXVIII (VET-ZYM) to see how it all comes out in the end. Not so Henry. His was not a frivolous mind. He intended to read the Encyclopaedia through, and he was not going to spoil his pleasure by peeping ahead.

(from "The Man With Two Left Feet," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Fearsome looking babe

     There was a moment, when Mike caught his first glimpse of Lady Adela Topping, when even his iron courage faltered a trifle. He had been warned, of course. They had told him that the chatelaine of Beevor Castle was a tough baby. But he had not been prepared for anything quite so formidable as this. Lady Adela had just returned from the garden and was still holding a stout pair of shears, and the thought of what a nasty flesh wound could be inflicted with these had a daunting effect.

    And apart from the shears he found her appearance intimidating. She was looking even more like Catherine of Russia than usual, and it was generally agreed that Catherine of Russia, despite many excellent qualities, was not everybody's girl.

(from Spring Fever, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He look like a what?!

    "No doubt Stanwood began by telling your father all about the Stoker, and your father, not to be outdone in the courtesies, told Stanwood all about the cook. Not being aware who he was, of course. In these casual encounters in bars names are rarely exchanged. Until I introduced them, Stanwood had been to your father merely a pleasant stranger who looked like a hippopotamus."

    "He does look like a hippopotamus, doesn't he?"

    "Much more than most hippopotamuses do."

(from Spring Fever, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse) 

Rich, but not handsome

     Barribault's Hotel being a favourite haunt of the wealthy, and the wealthy being almost uniformly repulsive, its lobby around the hour of one-thirty is always full of human eyesores. Terry in her new hat raised the tone quite a good deal. Or so it seemed to Mike Cardinal. She was sitting at a table near two financiers with four chins, and he made his way there and announced his presence with a genial "Boo!" in her left ear. Having risen some six inches in a vertical direction, she stared at him incredulously.

(from Spring Fever, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nervous old friends

     "Mr. Bennett, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves."

    "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."

(from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

They call it that, do they?

     The morning of May the twelfth, the fifty-second anniversary of his birth, had caught Lord Shortlands in poor shape. A dark despondency had him in its grip, and he could see no future for the human race. He glowered at the moat, thinking, as he had so often thought before, what a beastly moat it was.

    As a matter of fact, except for smelling a little of mud and dead eels, it was, as moats go, rather a good moat. But you would have been wasting your time if you had tried to sell that idea to Lord Shortlands. A sullen dislike for the home of his ancestors and everything onnected with it had been part of his spiritual make-up for some years now, and today, as has been indicated, he was in the acute stage of that malady which, for want of a better name, scientists call the heeby-jeebies.

(from Spring Fever, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Always that riding crop

     "We then decided to elope. You may be wondering what we're going to live on, but with my salary and a bit of money she has from the will of an aunt we shall be all right. So it was arranged that she should have an early breakfast, go to the garage, pinch the Bentley and put the other cars out of action,  leaving Cook for pursuint purposes only the Gardener's Ford."

    "That ought to fix him."

    "I think so. It is an excellent car for its purpose, but scarcely adapted to chasing daughters across country. Cook will never catch up with us."

    "Though I don't see what he could do, even if he did catch up with you."

    "You don't? What about that hunting crop of his?"

    "Ah, yes, I see what you mean."

(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not an enthusiastic greeting

    Orlo, as I had predicted, was in the bar having a gin and ginger. He lowered the beaker as I drew near and regarded me in a squiggle-eyed manner like a fastidious luncher observing a caterpillar in his salad.

    "Oh, it's you," he said.

    I conceded this, for he was right. No argument about it

(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not the day for negotiations

     He pursed his lips.

    "I'm afraid," he said, having unpursed them, "I couldn't do it as cheap as I'd like, sir. You see, what with them having discovered the animal's absence by this time, the hue and cry, as you might say, will be up and everybody at Mr. Cook's residence on the qui vive or alert. I'd be in the position of a spy in wartime carrying secret dispatches through the enemy's lines with every eye on the look-out for him. I'd have to make it twenty pounds."

    I was relieved. I had been expecting something higher. He, too, seemed to feel that he had erred on the side of moderation for he immediately added:

    "Or, rather, thirty."

    "Thirty!"

    "Thirty, sir."

    "Let's haggle," I said.

    But when I suggested twenty-five, a nicer-looking sort of number than thirty, he shook his grey head regretfully, so we went on haggling, and he haggled better than me so that eventually we settled on thirty-five.

    It wasn't one of my best haggling days.

(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

My wife does this, too

     She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations.

(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Stay away from equitorial Africa

    "You mustn't mind Cook, Wooster. He's upset. He's been having a spot of domestic trouble. That's why he asked me to come and stay. He thought I might have advice to offer. He allowed his daughter Vanessa to go to London to study Art at the Slade, if that's the name of the place, and she got in with the wrong crowd, got pinched by the police and so on and so forth, upon which Cook did the heavy father and jerked her home and told her she had got to stay there till she learned a bit of sense. She doesn't like it, poor girl, but I tell her she's lucky not to be in equatorial Africa, because there if a daughter blots her copybook, her father chops her head off and buries her in the back garden."

(from Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse) 

But it is hard to say

     Seated on the stile, his deportment rather like that of a young Hindu fakir lying for the first time on the traditional bed of spikes, Archie Gilpin seemed still to find a difficulty in clothing his thoughts in words. He cleared his throat a good deal and once more disturbed his hair with a fevered hand. He reminded Lord Ickenham of a nervous after-dinner speaker suddenly aware, after rising to his feet, that he has completely forgotten the story of the two Irishmen, Pat and mike, on which he had been relying to convulse his audience.

(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Uncle Fred will fix it

     "I say," said Archie, when he had finished panting. "Could you spare me a moment?"

    "Dozens, my dear fellow. Help yourself."

    "I don't want to interrupt you, if you're thinking about something."

    "I am always thinking about something, but I can switch it off in a second, just like that. What seems to be the trouble?"

    "Well, I'm in a bit of a jam, and my brother Ricky once told me that if ever I got into a jam of any kind you were the man to get me out of it. When it comes to fixing things, he said, you have to be seen to be believed."

    Lord Ickenham was gratified, as any man would have been. One always likes a word of praise from the fans.

(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Getting the best of an earl

     Lord Ickenham mused. This was a complication he had not taken into his calculations. "I see. Yes, I appreciate the difficulty."

    "Me, too."

    "This opens up a new line of thought. You'd better leave everything to me."

    "I don't see that you can do anything."

    "That is always a rash observation to make to an ickenham. As I once remarked to another young friend of mine, this sort of situation brings out the best in me. And when you get the best in Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of good old Ickenham, you've got something."

(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Pig Stealing 101

    "You mean why did I sack him? I'll tell you why I sacked him. He's a snake in the grass. He and the Briggs woman were plotting to steal my pig."

     "What!"

    "Are you deaf? I said they were plotting to steal the Empress."

    "But, Clarence!"

    "And if you say, 'But, Clarence!' once more, just once more," said Lord Emsworth sternly, "I'll know what to do about it. I suppose what you're trying to tell me is that you don't believe me."

    "How can I believe you? Miss Briggs came with the highest testimonials. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics."

    "Well, apparently the course she took there was the one on how to steal pigs."

(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Pity this poor receptionist!

     "If Lord Emsworth rings up tomorrow and says he is in prison and wants bail, tell him to get in touch immediately with his solicitors. Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith of Lincoln's Inn Fields."

(From Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Cheap duke

    "Well, I am hoping he will charm her. I'm a great believer in propinquity."

    The Duke was not at his best with long words, but he thought he saw what she was driving at. "You mean if he digs in here, he may cut this bloater-eating blighter out? Girl's father's a millionaire, isn't he?"

    "Several times over, I believe."

    "Then tell Archie to get after the wench with all speed," said the Duke enthusiastically. His nephew was employed by the Mammoth Publishing Company, that vast concern which supplies the more fatheaded of England's millions with their daily, weekly and monthly reading matter, but in so minor a capacity that he, the Duke, was still obliged to supplement his salary with an llowance. And if there was one thing that parsimonious man disliked, it was supplementing people's salaries with allowances. The prospect of getting the boy off his payroll was a glittering one, and his eyes bulged brightly as he envisaged it.

(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Unhappy lass

        She was a pretty girl of the small, slim, slender type, who would have been prettier if she had been more cheerful. Her brow was furrowed, her lips drawn, and the large brown eyes which rested on George Cyril Wellbeloved had in them something of the sadness one sees in those of a dachshund which, coming to the dinner table to get its ten per cent, is refused a cut off the joint.

(from Service With a Smile, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The color of the sea

     The sea had turned into a peculiar color, a glassy hue like that of a mirror in darkness. There was no moon, yet a sort of luminosity ran below the surface. This was a thing he had often seen when the Greenland ice was coming down. It was said among Gloucestermen that the rapid melting of the bergs and their gradual deposits of earth sometimes created this phosphorescence under sea. It often made the sea brilliant as opals, a brilliance that showed itself only when a keel drove through it. Otherwise it remained a dull sheen.

(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)

A nurse's place

     "But the Daniel, Maggie! The Daniel with the explosive aboard - why! it's no place for a girl. I can't -"

    "A girl! I'm not a girl tonight, Patrick. I'm a nurse and I want a nurse's place. I have my duty and I know what it is. It doesn't lie where I am safe. Never! It's where men are fighting and dying. I must do my duty by my father. I cannot leave him. Nor you. Nor your men. I belong to them as they belong to me. No, I will not leave you. No matter what you say."

(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)

Why Nazis were successful - to a point

     "That is why they are successful at work like this. They hate everything, suspect everything and everybody. Even themselves. One watches over the other."

(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)

Good-bye to the sea

     It was then lying at ease in the handsome cabin, that he became conscious again that fishing would soon be over with him. He had taken his oath to go to war. The time of his departure was not far off. Once the Daniel Webster had a good stock of halibut aboard, he'd take her home, leave her, and might never return to her. His beautiful, swift ship! Doing her job in the old way, taking her power down from the winds, up from the tides and currents of the sea, going like a wild goose over the water. His eyes became a little misty with a tender regret, a yearning for the old peace, the seasons of hard work and hard-won ease ashore.

(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)

The sailor's attitude

     "Show me the seaman who doesn't sorry at sea, Conrad, and I'll show you a real fool. My father always said, 'A good seaman fears the sea.' Fears it, Conrad, but doesn't hate it. Understand?"

(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)

Cornish Wrestling

 In the Sackett series of novels, Louis L'Amour frequently refers to Cornish style wrestling. Here is a Youtube spot that shows a demonstration of that type of wrestling.

Cornish Wrestling Demo - YouTube

The Hideous Hun

     Gustav von Seyffertitz was a German actor who was called "very embodiment of the Hideous Hun - America's notion of the merciless, atrocity-happy German military officer." He emigrated to the United States in 1896. Since he died in 1943, his role as The Typical German Officer applied more to the First World War than to the Second. He appeared in the stage production of The Brass Bottle in 1910, which show became the basis behind the TV show I Dream of Jeannie.

A model for Epstein?

         Mr. Duff was not in the frame of mind to respond to pep talks. He continued sombre. His resemblance to something carved by Epstein on the morning after a New Year's party had increased rather than diminished.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Bad taste, good medicine

     "I had often wondered what lovers said to one another when they met again after long parting. Now I know."

    "I wish you wouldn't call us lovers."

    "Well, aren't you?"

    "I tell you that's what I'm trying to figure out."

    "Did she smooth your pillows?"

    "No."

    "What did she do?"

    "She went arond to the drug store and brought me some stuff that tasted like weed killer. I'm not saying it didn't do me good. It did. But I'm still feeling as if someone had started a sewage plant in my mouth."

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Indispensible smart-aleck

     From the suede shoes on his large, flat feet to the jaunty hat on his pumpkin-shaped head, Howard Steptoe was correct in every detail. Birds twittered in admiration of his quiet grey suit, bees drew in their breath sharply as they eyed that faultless shirt, bettles directed one another's attentin to the garenia in the buttonhole. And Mrs. Steptoe who had been expecting something that looked like a tramp cyclist, revised her views about dispensing with Joss's services. He might be a criminal, and as fresh a criminal as ever wisecracked with one hand while pocketing the spoons with the other, but to a man who could turn Howard Steptoe out like that all must be forgiven.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not much in the way of entertainment

     To those who find themselvs marooned in Loose Chippings, about the only thing offered in the way of mental stimulus is the privilege of looking at the statue erected by a few friends and admirers to the memory of the late Anthony Briggs, J. P., for many years Parliamentary representative for the local division. You can walk up the High Street and look at it from the front, or you can walk down the High Street and look at it from the back. (By standing in the middle of the High Street you can also look at it sideways, but this is a technicality which need not detain us.)

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Even old boxers clean up pretty well

     "I certainly think it would be advisable to notify the police, and have them institute enquiries into his antecedents."

    "No, that's out," said Mrs. Steptoe, decidedly. Chibnall had agitated her, but even in her agitation she did not lose sight of that fact that Joss, if a peculiar - and possibly a criminal - valet, was an extremely efficient one. By what magic he had wrought the miracle, she could not say, but he had sent the hick Howard down to dinner on the previous night looking not merely respectable but refulgent. His shirt had shone like a lighthouse, so that Baronets gaped at the sight of it. So had his shoes. And as for his collar and tie, they could have been used as exhibits in a lecture on what the smart dresser should wear. It would be madness to put the police on the trail of this wonder-man.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

I'm out of here!

     The attitude of people towards densely moustached strangers who are galloping up, shouting "Hey!" varies a good deal according to the individual. Joss Weatherby in such circumstances would have stood his ground and investigated the phenomenon. So, probably, would Napoleon, Joe Louis and Attila the Hun. Lord Holbeton was mdae of more neurotic stuff. The spectacle, acting upon his already enfeebled morale, was too much for him. Directing at the other a single horrified glance, he was off up the drive with a brisknes which would have put him immediately out of range of anything that was not a jack rabbit. And even a jack rabbit would have been extended.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

And he is just the man to do it

     Chibnall blew an airy smoke ring. With subtle cunning, he had contrived to work the conversation round to the exact point where he wanted it. His love, deep though it was, had never blinded him to the fact that what the modern young woman needed, for the discipline of her soul, was to be properly scored off and put in her place from time to time.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Poor, but tough

     There is no anguish so acute as that experienced by a woman of strong views on class distinctions, who, having lavished all the charm of her best manner on a supposed scion of the nobility, discovers that he is the latest addition to her domestic staff. And Mrs. Steptoe would undoubtedly have given eloquent expression to her feelings, had she not, just as she was about to begin, caught Joss's eye. It was a strong, steady eye, the eye of a man who for two years had given J. B. Duff look for look, and if not actually made him wilt at least confined him reasonably closely to the decencies of debate. It impressed Mrs. Steptoe. She could recognize personality when she saw it.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Endangered crooners

     "Why didn't he come himself?"

    It was a question which Sally had anticipated. "He isn't well."

    "What's the matter with him?"

    "He - er - he's got a sore throat."

    "I don't wonder. Does he still sing all the time?"

    "He sings quite a lot."

    "If you can call it singing. Sounds like gas escaping from a pipe. 'But only God can make a tree.' Bah! In a really civilized community crooners would be shot on sight."

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

 

For self-preservation

     The fact was that Mr. Duff, a devil of a fellow among his own sex, was terrified of women. He avoided them if possible, and when cornered by one without hope of escape always adopted the shrewd tactics of the caterpillar of the puss moth - which, we are told by an eminent authority, "not satisfied with Nature's provisions for its safety, makees faces at young birds and alarms them coniderably." That was why Mr. Duff's features were working. Nature, making provision for his safety, had given him bushy eyebrows and piercing eyes, and he threw in the faces as an extra.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

No matter what

     Moreover, though now a little subdued by the thought of her coming interview with Mr. Duff, she was a light-hearted girl and enjoyed simple, wholesome comedy. The prospect of watching Mr. Steptoe's reactions, when confronted with Joss, made a strong appeal to her.

    "Well, if you're really serious."

    "Of course, I'm serious," said Joss. As an alternative to having this girl pass from his life, he owuld have accepted office as the Claines Hall scullery maid. When love came to them, the Weatherbys did not count the cost.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Coach Raveling's keepsake

     George Raveling was a college basketball coach at Washington State, Iowa, and USC at a time when there were very few black head coaches. 

    On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King Jr. waved goodbye to an audience of over 250,000 "March on Washington" participants, Raveling asked King if he could have the speech. King handed Raveling the original typewritten "I Have a Dream" pages. Raveling was on the podium with King at that moment, having volunteered to provide security. He still has the original, and has been offered more than three million dollars for the speech.

What hams have wrought

     "Write? You don't seem to understand the position. Fifteen years ago, when I met Jimmy Duff and fell for his smooth city ways, I was a young, idealistic girl, all sentiment and romance. This sentiment and romance he blunted for ever with these foul hams of his. He used to take me out in the moonlight and tell me what gave them that nutty flavour. He would wait till the band was playing "Traumerei" and then describe the process of curing. And now, when after all these weary years I've a chance to get my own back, you tell me to write? Write indeed! I'm going to call at his office and look him in the eye and slap this ham down on his desk and watch him curl up at the edges."

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Get on with it

     "Timid devotion gets a lover nowhere. I was chatting with Miss Bean this morning, and she was telling me that she had a good deal of trouble at one time with Constable Potter, owing to his devotion being so timid. She says that in the early days of his courtship he used to walk her out and chew his mustache and talk about the situation in China, but no real action. So one evening she said, 'Come on, my lad, get on with it,' and he got on with it. And after that everything went like clockwork."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Slippery uncle

     "How did you articulate when you spoke the words 'Brabazon-Plank'? Distinctly?"

    "Yes."

    "You didn't mumble?"

    "No."

    "So you could say that what you had really said was 'Smith' or "Knachtbull-Huguessen'?"

    "No."

    Lord Ickenham reflected. "Well, then, what we must do is to tell him that I am our Plank's brother."

    "Do you think you could get away with that?"

    "There are no limits to what I can get away with when I am functioning properly."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Good at impersonations

     "You'll call yourself something else?" he said, for he was a man who liked to approach these things from every angle.

    "Precisely."

    "But - "

    "I never like that word 'But.'"

    "You couldn't get away with it."

    Lord Ickenham laughed lightly. "My dear fellow, at The Cedars, Mafeking Road, in the suburb of Mitching Hill last spring I impersonated in a single afternoon and with complete success not only an official from the bird shop, come to clip the claws of the parrot, but Mr. Roddis, lessee of The Cedars, and a Mr. J. G. Bulstrode, a resident of the same neighborhood. It has been a lasting grief to me that I was given no opportunity of impersonating the parrot, which I am convinced I should have done on broad, artistic lines."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just moving in

     All through the narrative, Lord Ickenham had been reviving like a watered flower. His air, as it reached its culminating point, was that of one hearing tidings of great joy.

       "Disaster?" he said exuberantly "What do you mean, disaster? This is the most admirable thing that could have happened. I now have something I can get my teeth into. It is no longer a question merely of effecting an entry into the house, but of getting myself established there. And if there is one thing I enjoy more than another, it is getting established in other people's houses. It brings the roses to my cheeks and tones my whole system."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Haid

     Occasionally in books you will see the word "haid," generally spoken by Southern or Western characters. Then, when you hear the word pronounced in movies, it is generally pronouned "hade," rhyming with "shade." That is ludicrous, of course. I have NEVER heard anyone from the South pronounce it like that. That spelling is intended to demonstrate that the diphthong is to be drawn out, like those of us from this area invariably do. Thus it would be pronouned "hay-yid." But never "hade."

Nice, but not too bright

     "Still, there it is. So you and Pongo need not have split up at all."

    "No."

    "It was silly of him to take your breaking the engagement so seriously. My dear wife broke ours six times, and each time I came up smiling."

    "I ought to have remembered that Pongo does take things seriously."

    "Yes. A saintly character, but muttonheaded."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Runaway earl

     "How wonderful of you to come. And how brave! How did you manage to sneak away?"

    "What extraordinary verbs you employ, child."

    "Well, didn't Aunt Jane say she would scalp you with a blunt knife next time you were A.W.O.L.?"

    "In her playful way she did say something of the sort. Odd, that craving of hers to keep me vegetating in the country. But your honorary Aunt Jane is at the moment on her way to the West Indies. This has eased the situation a good deal. I thought it a good opportunity of broadening my mind."

    "Or playing hooky."

    "That is another way of putting it, of course."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. The uncle inplied in the conversation above is, of course, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, the world's foremost proponent of spreading sweetness and light.)

The fete must go on

     "The curate. You know Mr. Brotherhood, the curate. That nice young man with the pimples. He has gone and got measles, and I was relying on him to judge the babies."

    "What babies?"

    "The bonny babies, At the fete."

    A word about this fete. It was the high spot of Ashendon Oakshott's social year, when all that was bravest and fairest in the village assembled in the manor grounds and made various kinds of whoppee. Races were run. country dances danced, bonny babies judged in order of merit in the big tent and tea and buns consumed in almost incredible quantities. Picture a blend of the Derby and a garden party at Buckingham Palace, add Belshazzar's Feast, and you have the Ashenden Oakshott fete.

    One can readily appreciate, therefore, Lady Bostock's concern at the disaster which had occured. A lady of the manor, with an important fete coming along and the curate in bed with measles, is in the distressing position of an impresario whose star fails him a couple of days before the big production or a general whose crack regiment gets lumbago on the eve of the battle.

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A wife with a sense of humor

     What you need is a jolly, lively wife to take you out of yourself, the sort of wife who would set booby traps for the bishop when he came to spend the night. I don't suppose this Hermione Bostock of yours ever made so much as an apple-pie bed in her life. I'd give her a miss. Send her an affectionate telegram saying you've changed your mind and it's all off. I have a telegraph form in my study."

    A look of intense devoutness came over Pongo's face. "For your information, Uncle Fred, wild horses wouldn't make me break my engagement."

    "Most unlikely they'll ever try."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Buffy-Porson

     In his novel, Uncle Dynamite, Sir Pelham Wodehouse makes reference to a two-seater car called a Buffy-Porson that Pongo Twistleton drives. The picture below is actually supposed to be of Sir Pelham. I am not sure that the car is actually a Buffy-Porson, but it at least would be of the same general style, although it looks like it only has one seat.

Not much excitement

     Under normal conditions there is about the station of Ashenden Oakshott little or nothing to rouse the emotions and purge the soul with pity and terror. Once you have seen the stationmaster's whiskers, which are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass, you have drained it of all it has to offer in the way of thrills, unless you are one of those easily excited persons who can find drama in the spectacle of a small porter wrestling with a series of large milk cans. "Placid" is the word that springs to the lips.

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Lonely echoes

The corral where the cattle had beengathered looked lonely now, and the fire where their meals had been cooked was only long-dead ashes and blackened stones. There is nothing so flolorn as a deserted and long-dead campfire where one has been with friends.

(from Trouble Shooter, by Louis L'Amour) 

Wild cattle

     The wild cattle of the brush country had lost all domestication. They lived for the wilderness, and he had known of cases where, when removed from the brush, the cattle simply lay down and died, refusing to be driven despite torture and beating. And they were utterly savage, fighting anything that came into their path, possessed of the speed of a deer and the agility of a panther. He who has not encountered wild cattle in their native habitat can have no idea of their nature.

(from Trouble Shooter, by Louis L'Amour)

Invisible butler

     He disappeared into the library, and Bill turned to Jeeves, who had once again effaced himself. In times of domestic crisis, Jeeves had the gift, possessed by all good butlers, of creating the illusion that he was not there. He was standing now at the extreme end of the room, looking stuffed.

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Dame Twiggy

     Some of you who are my age may remember the British model who was known as Twiggy. She was remembered for being painfully thin and for her abnormally large eyes. She later had an acting career.

    What you may not know is that in 2019 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Thus she is now Dame Lesley Lawson, OBE. Below her picture is a link to a video of her receiving the honor from Prince Charles.

Twiggy receives Damehood from Prince Charles at palace - Bing video

By all means warn him

     It is a characteristic of women as a sex, and one that does credit to their gentle hearts, that - unless they are gangsters' molls or something of that kind - they shrink from the thought of violence. Even when love is dead, they dislike the idea of the man to whom they were once bethrothed receiving a series of juicy ones from a horsewhip in the competent hands of an elderly, but still muscular, chief constable of a county. When they hear such a chief constable sketching out plas for an operation of this nature, their instinct is to hurry to the prospective victim's residence and warn him of his peril by outlining the shape of things to come.

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just let him rest

     "I suppose there really is nobody one could borrow a bit of cash from?"

    "Nobody who springs immediately to the mind, m'lord."

    "How about that financier fellow, who lives out Ditchingham way - Sir Somebody Something?"

    "Sir Oscar Wopple, m'lord? He shot himself last Friday."

    "Oh, then we won't bother him."

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Without ruth

     "Did you notice him at dinner?"

    "To which aspect of his demeanour during the meal does your lordship allude?"

    "I was thinking of the sinister way he tucked into the roast duck. He flung himself on it like a tiger on its prey. He gave me the impression of a man without ruth or pity."

(From Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. We seldom see the word "ruth" used in American English. Almost always it is attached to "-less" to indicate an absence of the quality.)

Supremely useful, and totally useless

     Louis L'Amour has said that many cowboys just were not interested in doing any work that could not be done from a horse's back, and I can somewhat understand their feelings. Cowboy boots, as has been said many times, are admirably suited to the cowboy's work. The pointed toe allows the boot to slip into the stirrup smoothly, and the high heel prevents the foot from sliding too far forward and helps to keep the cowboy from being thrown if his horse bucks or makes sudden turns.

    On the other side of the ledger, cowboy boots are just about useless for any other type of work. You certainly can't run in them. The high heels are going to give you lower back problems if you have to stand in them all day. The long, pointed toes are a trip hazard. Great for what they were designed to do, but not of much use elsewhere. So why not stay where your boots were designed to be used? I can understand that.

Easy to understand

        "But I must have the money, and I must have it before noon tomorrow." His voice rose in what in a lesser man would have been a wail. "Listen. I'll have to let you in on something that's vitally secret, and if you breathe a word to a soul I'll rip you both asunder with my bare hands, shred you up into small pieces and jump on the remains with hobnailed boots. It that understood?"

    Bill considered. "Yes, that seems pretty clear. Eh, Jeeves?"

    "Most straightforward, m'lord."

    "Carry on, Captain."

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

There's poetry, and then there's poetry

     It was a night made for romance, and Mrs. Spottsworth recognized it as such. Although in her vers libre days in Greenwich Village she had gone in almost exclusively for starkness and squalor, even then she had been at heart a sentimentalist. Left to herself, she would have turned out stuff full of moons, Junes, loves, doves, blisses and kisses. It was simply that the editors of the poetry magazines seemed to prefer rat-ridden tenements, the smell of cooking cabbage, and despair, and a girl had to eat.

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Concerning husbands and lions

     As she passed through the great gates of Rowcester Abbey and made her way up the long drive, it was beginning to seem to her that she might do considerably worse than cultivate Captain Biggar. A woman needs a protector, and what better protector can she find than a man who thinks nothing o going into tall grass after a wounded lion? True, wounded lions do not enter largely into the ordinary married life, but it is nice for a wife to know that if one does happen to come along, she can leave it with every confidence to her husband to handle.

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

An easy mark for the women

     "And of course the great thing is to gt the young blighter safely married and settled down, thus avoiding the risk of his coming in one day and laying on the mat something with a platinum head and an Oxford accent which he picked up on the pier at Blackpool. You remember what a pushover he always was for the gentle sex."

    "I haven't seen Pongo since we were kids."

    "Even then he was litting rom flower to flower like a willowy butterfly. He was the Don Juan of his dancing class when he wore Little Lord Fauntleroy suits, his heart an open door with 'Welcome' on the mat."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Choose to fight a brave man

     He could feel it coming now, the dry mouth, the sick, empty feeling in the belly. This time it would be for keeps. One of them would die. Charlie Gant was like a mad dog that would bite and tar at anything in his lust to destroy. Take a brave man every time, Zeb thought - I'd fear a brave man less than a coward. The coward has no scruples.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

The reason he lived to be old

     The wind off the snow-covered peaks was cold. He added sticks to the fire. The older man had gone off in the shadows and bedded down for the night. He was no fool. Whatever happened, he was going to be out of it - more than likely that was how he came to be so old.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

Different methods of warfare

     The Indian way was to fight a great battle - one battle - and on the outcome would the decision rest. Not until the white man came did the Indian discover what a campaign meant. The Indian fought, then retired to his lodge; but the white man followed after, destroyed the Indian's corn, his meat, and his lodge.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

"Slimy" characters

 I figure actors are glad to take their money and run, regardless of the characters they have to portray. And I have heard that many of them actually prefer to play unsavory parts because they are a challenge. But I would hate to have had to portray "slimy" characters. It is one thing to be a bad guy whom everyone boos, and something else again to play someone that no one would touch with a ten-foot pole.

Ironically, actor Howard McNear (Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith Show) was a lovable sort on the TV program, but very often, because of his unique voice, played sleazy sorts on old radio programs, where he was one of the busiest of actors.

Frisco's history

     "Lil, have you seen, really seen San Fransisco? It's ugly and small and full of fleas, and it burns down every five minutes, but each time they rebuild it gets bigger and finer.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

Just building a fire

     So simple a thing, a lighted fire, yet it was a symbol of man's first great step toward civilization, and it was his instinctive return to reality when times of trouble came. It is his first reaction, to build a fire, to give himself the security and comfort that a fire symbolizes.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

No respecter of persons

     There were those, of course, who scoffed at Indian attacks and who did not fear, who believed death was something that happened to others, and not to them. They had not yet discovered the impartiality of death.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

Like a rock

     That would be Brutus at the oar. He was the stalwart one, the stable one. Never excited, never disturbed, when trouble or danger came he simply bowed his head and pushed on, as his sort will always push on, to their last day.

    When others panic or shout, when they wail and shed bitter tears, decrying the changing times, there are those like Brutus who simply go on. Changing times, anger, disappointment, defeat - all these they take in stride, living their lives with quiet persistence.

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

Looks like some of my relatives

     Old Mr. Howard Saxby was seated at his desk in his room at the Edgar Saxby Literary Agency when Cosmo arrived there. He was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep hiself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting. He was a long, thin gentleman in his middle seventies with a faraway, unseeing look in his eye, not unlike that which a dead halibut on a fishmonger's slab gives the pedestrian as he passes.

(from Cocktail Time by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Mustn't bring up the dirt

     "Do you realize that every single discreditable episode in my past is filed away in Nannie's memory? She could and would tell Bunny things about me which in time would be bound to sap her love. How long could a wife go on looking on her husband as a king among men after hearing an eyewitness's account of his getting jerked before a tribunal and fined thee weeks' pocket money for throwing rocks at the kitchen window or a blow-by-blow description of the time he was sick at his birthday party through eating too much almond cake? In about two ticks I should sink to the level of a fifth-rate power."

(from Cocktail Time, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Good as gold

     "Phoebe, poor lost soul, has a way of putting her head on one side like a canary and saying, 'What, dear?' when spoken to, which must be very annoying to a man accustomed to having one and all hang upon his lightest word. It is when she has done this some six or seven times in the course of a breakfast or luncheon that, according to Peasemarch, he shoots up to the ceiling in a sheet of flame and starts setting about her regardless of her age or sex. Yes, I can see his side of the thing, but it must be very bad for his blood pressure and far from pleasant for all concerned. Peasemarch says it wrings his heart to listen with his ear to the keyhole. You don't know Bert Peasemarch, do you?"

    "No."

    "Splended chap. About as much brain as you could put comfortably into an aspirin bottle, but what are brains if the heart be of gold?"

(from Cocktail Time, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Useless young men

     Sir Raymond had never been fond of the modern young man, considering him idiotic, sloppy, disrespectful, inefficient and, generally speaking, a blot on the London scene, and this Brazil nut sequence put, if one may so express it, the lid on his distaste. It solidified the view he had always held that steps ought to be taken about the modern young man and taken promptly. What steps, he could not at the moment suggest, but if, say, something on the order of the Black Death were shortly to start setting about these young pests and giving them what was coming to them, it would have his full approval. He would hold its coat and cheer it on.

(from Cocktail Time, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Practiced nonchalance

 "I would advise your lordship to assume a nonchalant air and disclaim all knowledge of the matter."

"With a light laugh, you mean?"

"Precisely, m'lord."

Bill tried a light laugh. "How did that sound, Jeeves?"

"Barely adequate, m'lord."

"More like a death rattle?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"I shall need a few rehearsals."

"Several, m'lord. It will be essential to carry conviction."

Bill kicked petulantly at a footstool. "How do you expect me to carry conviction, feeling the way I do?"

"I can readily appreciate that your lordship is disturbed."

"I'm all of a twitter. Have you ever seen a jelly hit by a cyclone?"

"No, m'lord. I have never been present on such an occasion."

"It quivers. So do I."

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Going home

     "Why we leavin' so early, Pa?" Linus asked.

    "We've a long way to go, Linus, but we're making the best trip a man can ever make."

    "How's that?"

    "Why we're going home? When you've lived without one as long as I have, son, you'll know what music there is in the word."

(from How the West Was Won, by Louis L'Amour)

Older and better

     "You know, Pongo, the whole trouble in this world is the way fellows deteriorate as they grow older. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all their finer qualities away, with the result that the frightfully good chap of twenty-five is changed little by little into the stinker of fifty. Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say. 'Absurd,' you are about to protest. 'Look at you, Uncle Fred. Every day in every way you have got better and better. A saintly boy, you have grown into a saintly senior, revered and respected by all, and the brain reels at the thought of the heights you will reach when you are eighty.' Quite true, but I am a rare exception."

(from Cocktail Time, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)